Advanced Accelerated Power Cycling Test for Reliability Investigation of Power Device Modules

This paper presents an apparatus and methodology for an advanced accelerated power cycling test of insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) modules. In this test, the accelerated power cycling test can be performed under more realistic electrical operating conditions with online wear-out monitoring of tested power IGBT module. The various realistic electrical operating conditions close to real three-phase converter applications can be achieved by the simple control method. Further, by the proposed concept of applying the temperature stress, it is possible to apply various magnitudes of temperature swing in a short cycle period and to change the temperature cycle period easily. Thanks to a short temperature cycle period, test results can be obtained in a reasonable test time. A detailed explanation of apparatus such as configuration and control methods for the different functions of accelerated power cycling test setup is given. Then, an improved in situ junction temperature estimation method using on-state collector–emitter voltage VCE ON and load current is proposed. In addition, a procedure of advanced accelerated power cycling test and test results with 600 V, 30 A transfer molded IGBT modules are presented in order to verify the validity and effectiveness of the proposed apparatus and methodology. Finally, physicsof-failure analysis of tested IGBT modules is provided.